Killers

[nina421]

Did anyone actually come to the concert for the Killers?  Reading these posts it seems like everyone was more of an Ambulance fan.  I'm feeling a little left out since I came to the concert for the Killers.

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

So you like bands that look more like they should be on a WB fashion model show for teens?

[sonickteam2]

Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
   a WB fashion model show for teens?

how do you know what those people look like?

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

Channel surfing during the PBS commercials
 
 

Originally posted by sonickteam2:
   

Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
   a WB fashion model show for teens?

how do you know what those people look like? [/b]

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

Heaven ain't close in a place like this" is the recurring echo of the Killers' left-field hit "Somebody Told Me," and the Las Vegas band certainly has spent the past year cultivating an air of amoral decadence around itself and its debut album, "Hot Fuss." The fickle British press bit, proclaiming the band wanton American rock-and-roll saviors (for a month or so, anyway). But at the sold-out 9:30 club Sunday night, the Killers looked and sounded like a garden-variety garage band -- and not a very exciting one at that.
 
 The Killers' musical models are mostly Britpoppers like Pulp, Blur and Oasis -- singer Brandon Flowers and guitarist Dave Keuning first bonded over Oasis -- but the NYC stances of the Strokes and Interpol came through clearly during the 40-minute set.
 
 
 
 Hackneyed to death? The Killers were commonplace criminals at the 9:30 club. (Jelle Wagenaar)  
 
  <img src="http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I7219-2004Oct04L" alt=" - " />
 
 Led by Flowers's faux-Brit vocals and sleazoid keyboard riffs, the Killers are best consumed as a singles band: "Mr. Brightside," "Midnight Show" and "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" all grind forward with a new-wave thump that sounds good from a car radio. That trio of tunes was the best thing about the show, with Keuning carving the chord changes into Flowers's licentious lyrical snapshots. The rest, like the ridiculous "Indie Rock and Roll," were forgettable at best. And it was telling that the evening's most delicious moment of rock-and-roll decadence was not anything the Killers did, but rather the dirty strains of Kiss's "Calling Dr. Love," slithering from the PA before the band took the stage.

[sonickteam2]

Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
  Channel surfing during the PBS commercials
 

i didnt know they had NASCAR on PBS!  neat.

[Bombay Chutney]

Originally posted by sonickteam2:
   

Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
  Channel surfing during the PBS commercials
 

i didnt know they had NASCAR on PBS!  neat. [/b]

Speaking of NASCAR, last weekend I heard GBV's "Bulldog Skin" used as a commercial lead-in on one of the pre-race shows.

[malkmess]

i was there for the killers. it was just a double treat that ambulance were opening.

[Arthwys]

I thought PBS didn't have commercials, either that or only between shows.

[Bags]

October 6, 2004
 ROCK REVIEW | THE KILLERS
 Starting With Indie, Looking to Move On
 By BEN RATLIFF
 The New York Times
 
 Any popular music that begins in slyness or in jest will end in a straight face. The Killers, a young band from Las Vegas who sold out two shows at Irving Plaza this week, are students of the early-1980's New Wave revival and won't rest until they know all the declensions and multiplication tables. They're dealing with a language of foppish moans and echoey guitar and synthesizer lines; they are inflating and popularizing these elements, through steady rat-a-tat eighth notes, into something as expansive as skywriting and rigid as a Mass.
 
 At least that's how they're choosing to reach audiences in their own country. The band's first album, "Hot Fuss" (Island), was released with different songs in Britain and America. On the British version there's a song called "Indie Rock & Roll," and it might be the Killers' best work: it sounds like an anthem and works along less forthright lyrical lines, lining up disconnected glimpses of an indie-rock fan's frumpy but passionate life. When the band played it at Irving Plaza on Monday, they broke out of the sackcloth-and-ashes mode: the singer Brandon Flowers, buffered from contemporaneity by a waistcoat, tie and floppy haircut, began to let himself go. "Indie rock & roll is in my soul," he sang and shouted. "It's what I need." He was transmitting sincerity and self-mockery at the same time.
 
 Clearly the Killers are obsessed with the notion of indie rock. But it's a particular kind: frequently they sound like idiosyncratic bands that had brief moments of true popularity in America, like the Psychedelic Furs, New Order and Big Country, among others. This band doesn't want to remain indie rockers; they want to have started out that way. With songs of jealousy and stolen girlfriends, like "Mr. Brightside" and "Smile Like You Mean It," filled with heavy and simple melodic hooks and a huge sound, they're shortening the aesthetic distance between indie-rock cabalism and mass audiences.